Pondering 2.4 mana regen

Brelaine at LFGHealer did a nice summation of a lot of stuff done by elitist jerks. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. I’m going to roll it further down the road. Seriously, take the time to at LEAST read Brelaine’s post.

What I’m going to do is take the magic formula for regen and see if I can figure out the MP5/Spirit/Int break points – the infamous, “given a choice which do I want” discussion.

A side step. That number in the middle – 0.009327 – changes based on level. (So sayeth the author of RatingBuster, who also demonstrates his means of obtaining the info – it’s replicable, I trust it for now.) The lower your level the higher the number. IOW, if your level 60 and level 70 have exactly the same Int and Spi, the level 60 will regen faster. To be blunt, only if the lower level got phenomenal gearing… (Twink)

Now, our source makes a minor error. She (He?) applies the constant to spirit. That’s wrong. It applies to the whole. This is really rather important.

It means when trying to determine the inflection point between SPI and INT, we can ignore the constant. We’ll need it again when we drag MP5 into the discussion, but for now…

Regen = (SPI + .001) * SQRT(INT)

Now as it happens, what this means is that there is no “always” answer. It is never “Always” better to put one point in spirit or in int. Instead, there’s an inflection point – a rule you can lock in place.

Optimal regen is when INT*2 = SPI.

Uh-huh, you say. So, that means what, exactly?

Easy. If your int is less than half your spirit, increase int. If it’s MORE than half, increase SPI.

CAVEAT CAVEAT CAVEAT. Seriously, people, CAVEAT. This ONLY matters for OPTIMAL mana regeneration – when you have a choice between the same amount of SPI or INT increase. Sort of. sigh – a bit more dictating without the math. Since we’ve got a square root involved, the rule of squares comes into play. Rather than make your head explode let me give you a couple of limiters – again, for MANA REGEN ONLY. If INT and SPI are equal, then 1 SPI = 2 INT. If SPI is 4 times INT, then 1 INT = 2 SPI. In other words –

The further you are from the inflection point of 2 SPI for 1 INT, the greater gain you make for moving TOWARD balance.

Let me take a specific example. I, unbuffed (without IDS kicking in) have ~400 SPI and ~520 INT. Because it’s how I did the chart (more on that in a bit), let me say I have a choice between 10 MP5, 10 SPI, and 10 INT.

But – you say – we REALLY want to know about INSIDE the 5SR. And there, isn’t MP5 better? Well, yes – if you can get an even exchange.

As I’ve developed before, right now Blizzard seems to offer about 1 mp5 per 3.5 spirit. Spirit and Int seem to be pretty close to 1:1, but that’s a intuitive number that I’ll have to examine later. Let’s assume it’s so for the moment.

In this case, I expect to be choosing between roughly 10 spirit and 3 mp5. Now, I know that with my discipline talent I get 30% spirit regen while in combat.

Well, lookie there. 10 spirit in MY situation is 3.3 mp5. Guess which is a better choice THIS TIME, FOR ME? By the way, if I get any other bonuses – human, pally buff, etc – it looks even better. But I digress.

I’ve made mention of a chart. What I did was make a spreadsheet with the first row and column starting at 0 and increasing by 10 to 1200 — seemed a decent limit on total INT and SPI. Column SPI, row INT, I filled the first cell inside with the following formula:

=SQRT(B$1)*($A2+001)*0.009327*5

And then I copied and pasted throughout the spreadsheet. Excel and OpenOffice both make the references relative – meaning when I’m in cell X27 B$1 becomes X1 and $A2 becomes $A27. The result is the increase by tens — close enough for seeing what I posted here. But you probably want something specific. So make the following data, assuming Your SPI is A1 and the data entry block is A2:

umm, please notice that those last two formulas are one line, but I’ve put them on two so you can see the whole thing. Also, please notice I saved myself a touch of grief and DID NOT INCLUDE your previous specific MP5. If you’re swapping some out, just net the number for the new MP5, mkay?

What it will show you is the difference between your old and new mana regen rate for that change. Swap in the two sets of numbers and go for it.

All that said… Folks, if you’re into the upper levels your mana regen is going to start looking a WHOLE lot better. As in – Right now my paper doll unbuffed O5SR is 325, I5SR is 126. That includes 39 points of MP5 gear. Under the current PTR, my I5SR rate (with +39) will be 166 mp5 – an increase of 30 mp5. My O5SR (again +39) will be 485 mp5. At a dance rate of 70 — sorry, if I spend 70% of time in the 5SR, my nominal regen rate will go from approximately 186 to approximately 286.

I already rarely go OOM in PVE. This?

If it comes into play this way, I expect it to get nerfed.

Oh, by the way… If it does come into play, I will look hard at changing some of my enchants and gems from INT and MP5 to SPI. Well, the ones that aren’t STA for my PVP work. Just thought I’d let you know.

Nice post. I also have a great deal of mana regen myself. 272 unbuffed while casting. And of course it takes really hard fights to get oom. But you should take into account the changes in Haste rating and Haste gear. Haste improves HPS, but reduces the MPH. And as it seems the way to go for new encounters will be haste gear, this means that we are going to need a lot more mana than we did before. So i dont think it will be nerfed.

About…

I've experience with many priests of many races and specs on several servers. The more I play, the more I realize how much I do not yet know. This is a share of some of what I have learned.
My main these days is Zingiber on the Undermine server.